The paper reviews the diverse experience of OECD countries in establishing and running independent fiscal institutions, offering insights that could be useful for Latin American countries seeking to set-up and strengthen those institutions in the region. Through cluster analysis, we identify...

Continuing the recent fall in income inequality and poverty will necessitate stepping up efforts to both address pressing social issues and bolster economic growth. Redoubling efforts to improve education outcomes would help Mexicans gaining the skills needed to participate in an evolving job...

Mexico has large potential to boost its productivity and attract investment from companies looking to relocate their operations to North America. It also has an historic opportunity to spread the benefits of trade throughout the country, integrate SMEs more forcefully into value chains and to...

Access to adequate housing remains challenging in Mexico as many low- and middle- income households cannot afford purchasing a house because of high housing prices and limited access to credit. An underdeveloped housing rental market and insufficient supply of social and affordable housing force...

Education and training are a high priority for Costa Rica that devotes to them more than 6.5% of GDP, one of the highest spending shares among OECD countries. However, educational outcomes remain poor and firms struggle to fill their vacancies, particularly in technical and scientific positions,...

This paper estimates the pass-through of monetary policy rates into five lending rates in Mexico using auto regressive distributed lags models (ARDLs) and taking into account several financial market characteristics. Results show that the pass-through of monetary policy into the average...

The access to formal financial services in Mexico is particularly low. Access is also significantly unequal across income levels, gender, between rural and urban areas and across regions. SMEs access to bank credit is low, hampering firms’ ability to grow and innovate. The use of cash and...

Individuals’ access to finance is particularly low in Mexico. Widening access to finance would boost growth and inclusion. This paper uses microdata from the National Survey for Financial Inclusion to assess the drivers of and the barriers to people’s financial inclusion in Mexico. Results...

This paper proposes an approach to assess the extent of automatic fiscal stabilisation of aggregate household disposable income after a specific shock. The approach is based on the national account identity of household disposable income and elements of the OECD methodology to cyclically adjust...

Building on the automatic fiscal stabilisers literature, this paper assesses how automatic stabilisers have evolved over the past two decades by analysing changes in the personal income tax and social benefit systems. In three-quarters of the 35 OECD countries analysed, indicators of the...